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jbbarnes1917 · 3 years ago

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Dark and Broody Ch 1

Warnings: angst, PTSD mentions

Words: 2791

Chapter 1

You’d been Blipped out of the world with half the universe, not knowing what the hell was happening, and Blipped back – seemingly – just as fast in the living room of you and your boyfriend’s apartment. For you, it was five seconds, but truly, it had been five years. Or so his wife had told you, sympathy on her face as she tried to explain what happened to the best of her ability. It wasn’t that he was planning on getting married to someone else, it was that he didn’t think you’d ever come back. There was no way you could blame him, though it didn’t make it hurt any less.

You weren’t sure what to do. Luckily, he’d kept most of your stuff, but that still left you without a place to stay. They’d made a few calls for you, getting a hold of old friends. One of them was more than happy to let you crash on her couch for as long as you needed to get back on your feet.

It was a blessing in disguise, your friendship rekindling easily. But you didn’t want to stay on her couch forever. Which led you to dive right in to finding a new job. You’d been a paramedic before the Blip, hoping you could just go back to doing that. It wasn’t that easy, seeing as they’d always had strict rules in place for licensing. The more you researched it, the more you realized it might be easier than you thought. A new precedent was being set, a six-month course to catch up on the latest changes and to refresh your knowledge. It was a rough six months, but you’d done it, getting back onto the streets in no time to help those in need.

Having a job again, getting back to doing what you loved, allowed you to move out of Amanda’s apartment and into your own. It was an older building in Brooklyn, a fourth floor walk up. It wasn’t as good as the apartment you’d had with Tyler, but it was yours. It was time to start fresh. Your neighbor seemed to have issues, hearing screams through the walls some nights, as if they couldn’t escape their demons fast enough.

You’d stop at the coffee shop just down the block on the mornings you didn’t work, making coffee at home on the days you did. There was an adjustment period to getting yourself back into a routine. Coffee, grocery shopping, the gym, catching up with old friends and making new ones. At least once a month, you’d go out to a bar to hang out, occasionally going off on your own every once in a while when it all got too much.

It seemed like most of your friends hadn’t Blipped like you had, allowing them to continue on with their lives. You felt stuck, felt behind on the times. They had five years on you now, having marriages and kids and careers.

You’d noticed him at the coffee shop, dark and broody. He seemed familiar, but you could never quite place it. He was either coming in when you were going out or vice versa. Something about him always seemed to catch your eye, nagging in the back of your brain.

Then, you noticed him around the neighborhood, at the grocery store. Always with a scowl on his face, like he didn’t want to be out and about but had to be for whatever reason. You never heard him talk.

It made sense that you’d given him a backstory in your head. That he’d been Blipped with the rest of the world and come back to a life he didn’t know how to handle. Maybe his mom died while he was gone, his girlfriend marrying someone else – much like your situation. Maybe he didn’t Blip, his life falling apart around him. Maybe he’d lost his entire family, falling into a hole nobody could get him out of.

“Sorry! Shit!” you quickly said when you bumped into someone on the street, spilling your coffee on their jacket.

When you looked up, it was Mr Dark and Broody. Before this moment, you’d never been this close to him, seeing the storm of blue in his eyes, the way his brow furrowed, and his lips pressed tighter. He looked beat down, like he was forcing himself to keep going. You knew that feeling and that look all too well, having not only been there yourself, but seeing people there every day with your job.

“Fucking perfect,” he grumbled, wiping the excess liquid off with gloved hands.

How he wasn’t dying of heat stroke, you weren’t sure. It had to be easily eighty-degrees out, yet here he was in a leather jacket and gloves. Your eyes lingered on his face, that nagging back that you had to have met him somewhere before.

“Again, I’m so sorry,” you repeated, hoping you didn’t just completely ruin this man’s day. “I should probably…” You pointed in the direction of your apartment building, quickly walking off.

You couldn’t help but mentally slap yourself a few times. Mr Dark and Broody was much more handsome up close, and you definitely were not expecting to get that flustered. Let alone spill your coffee on the poor man. And of course this all had to happen after your shift from Hell. You were just ready to go home and go to sleep.

There was the feeling someone was following you home, but you didn’t dare look back to see. Surely it was all in your head. Yet, as you walked through the front door of the apartment building and up the stairs to the fourth floor, there was the distinct sound of a second pair of feet behind you. Maybe it wasn’t all in your mind after-all.

“Look, I don’t know what you wa-” Your sentence cut off when you saw it was Mr Dark and Broody behind you, a look of displeasure on his face as he looked at you, not saying anything. “Sorry, I… Why are you following me? If you need me to pay for the dry cleaning…”

“I live here,” he answered, voice short with you as he motioned to the door next to yours.

Of course, Mr Dark and Broody was also the one who would wake you up at three in the morning with screaming. There obviously was more to this man than met the eye, not sure if you should feel sorry or be annoyed.

“Oh. I’ve never seen you in the building before, so I-” He didn’t let you finish your sentence as he walked into his apartment, shutting the door in your face. How rude!

—

Over the next few months, the two of you would pass each other in the hall, at the coffee shop, at the grocery store. He never seemed to acknowledge you, not since that first day. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as if you wanted to get to know this man, Mr Dark and Broody. Sure, his screams would wake you up in the middle of the night still, and sure you still didn’t know why you seemed to think you knew him. He was just a stranger. A very attractive stranger…neighbor…something.

It had been a long day at work, dark circles under your eyes from lack of sleep and stress in the past twenty-four hours. It had been rough enough for you to forgo the morning coffee on the way back home, and just go straight to your apartment. You hadn’t thought to change out of your uniform after that last call, just wanting to go home and forget about the sight of the woman’s mangled body halfway out of the windshield of her car…

“You okay?” a gruff voice asked, pulling you from your thoughts.

You weren’t sure how long you’d been standing there with your keys in your hands, not moving to open the door. It was instinctual to turn towards the voice, seeing Mr Dark and Broody locking up his apartment.

“Are you hurt?” he added, a hint of concern evident in his voice. You looked down, seeing the blood on your clothes still.

“Not mine,” you mumbled, fumbling to unlock the door.

“Is it one of those where you’ll add ‘You should see the other guy?’” he asked, obvious that he was attempting a joke to lighten the mood. You didn’t even think it was possible for the man to joke, considering you’d never even seen a hint of a smile on his face. The joke didn’t sit well.

“When you have to pull the mother of three out of the windshield of her car for the coroner to take her to the morgue while one of her kids stands and watches, then you’ll understand,” you snapped. It was you that slammed the door in his face this time, not registering the look of guilt on his face.

—

It was a continuous dance of barely running into each other, neither of you trying any conversation after the last two times. You’d hoped that maybe you’d have one of those TV neighbor friendships with someone on your floor, but that obviously wasn’t happening any time soon. The TV shows also never told you what to do when your neighbor would wake you up at three in the morning multiple times a week screaming for no damn good reason.

It had been a rough week for you at work, seeming to lose more patients than save. There was a lot on your mind of what you could have done differently to change the outcome. You knew there was nothing you could do to change the past, mentors having told you that you needed to leave work at work and not continue to dwell long after the call was over. But that wasn’t you. You cared deeply about every single patient you came in contact with.

So, when you were awoken by screaming – again – after having just fallen asleep, you couldn’t help but be annoyed. You’d been living next to Mr Dark and Broody for the past four months, not saying anything about the nearly nightly interruption of your sleep. With everything else going on, there was no hesitation as you got up to pull on your robe and slip into your slippers. There was determination in your step as you marched your way out of your apartment and in front of his. You knocked, continuing to knock loudly until he opened the door.

Mr Dark and Broody didn’t seem as Dark and Broody. He seemed like so many people you knew – including yourself. He was plagued with demons that didn’t leave him be. You kept your eyes on his face, not letting yourself linger down his exposed chest to his dog tags, his left arm hidden behind the door.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“To sleep!” you snapped back just as quick. “I get it. I get the PTSD and the nightmares, I’m sure I’ve woken you up a few times with my own. But for the love of God, I just want one week. One simple week when I can sleep without getting woken up! Get some fucking help, man!”

He just looked at you, eyes narrowed with lips pressed tight. You gave him a similar look, crossing your arms over your chest. He was good at staring.

“Is that all?” he finally asked, which caused you to let out an annoyed huff, turning to go back to your apartment.

Your hand was on the handle, glancing over at him as you went to open the door. Which was locked. With your phone inside to call the landlord.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” you grumbled, letting your forehead smack against the door with your eyes closed. “Mr Dark and Broody, can you call the landlord to get someone to let me back in?”

“Mr Dark and What?” he asked, not moving from his spot.

“Never mind…can I please borrow your phone?”

He didn’t say anything as he shut the door, which seemed to be the kind of guy he was. You were about to turn to sit on the floor, hoping another one of your neighbors would be stumbling home from the bar or something soon to see if you could borrow their phone. Just as your back hit the door, Mr Dark and Broody opened the door, having put on a long sleeve shirt and the gloves you’d come to recognize easily. Then he tossed you his phone with the number already pulled up.

It was a quick conversation with the landlord, the man not thrilled about the early morning phone call. He’d told you he couldn’t get someone to get the door unlocked until at least eight in the morning. You considered calling Amanda, but you couldn’t remember her number off the top of your head.

“Thanks,” you told your neighbor, handing him his phone back before sitting on the floor to wait it out.

“How long is he gonna be?”

“Not until at least eight, but could be longer. This is just how I wanted to spend my last day off before going back to work.”

You looked up at him as he extended a gloved hand in your direction. There was a moment of hesitation before you took it in your own, allowing him to pull you up off the floor with a surprising amount of ease.

“You can hang out in mine until the locksmith comes,” he told you, leading you into his apartment.

You couldn’t lie when you said you’d been expecting dark wood furniture to go with the nickname you’d given him. You weren’t expecting a single couch in the living room with a pillow and blanket on the floor, an entertainment center across the room with a TV. There were a few movies, but other than that, it seemed like this was it for his apartment.

“It isn’t much,” he told you. “Haven’t really had the time to set it up since I… Blipped back.”

“It’s been nearly a year,” you quickly reminded him, but he just shrugged it off as you looked around. There were a couple of pictures that you were able to get a closer look at. The man in the picture looked a lot like Mr Dark and Broody. The only thing off was that it was a grainy photo of him – both arms intact – with bruises and small lacerations on his face and neck, a rifle in hand, smiling next to none other than Captain America.

You’d been in New York, watching it on the television. You remembered The Battle of Washington, D.C. You had friends who responded, friends who you’d lost in the aftermath, whether it was the incident itself or from the after effects of seeing it first hand. It wasn’t hard to begin to put the pieces together. Your neighbor was Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes… The Winter Soldier.

“You’re him,” you announced softly. “You’re Bucky Barnes.”

He spoke up at the same time as you, “That’s not who I am anymore.”

“You’re no longer Bucky?” you asked, your brows knitting together, which got an equally confused look from Bucky.

“I thought you were going to say The Winter Soldier. That’s what most people say when they recognize me…and that’s not who I am anymore,” he explained.

It made sense. For nearly the past seventy years, that’s who he’d been, how he’d been identified and described. It was every part of his identity. Now, it wasn’t. He was trying to completely disconnect himself from the name. There was no way you could blame him for that, for assuming that you’d automatically connect him to his past. All of this made the nightmares make more sense. He had a lot of pent-up demons, making you feel worse about this morning debacle.

“It’s been nearly a decade since D.C. Plus, I mean…if you were too much of a threat, surely SWORD wouldn’t let you be…you know…out,” you rationalized, getting an agreeing nod from Bucky. “I mean. Had I put two and two together, I wouldn’t have jumped on your ass as much tonight. I get it. I mean, not entirely. I wasn’t a prisoner of war or anything, but I understand seeing things you can’t get out of your head.” You couldn’t stop rambling.

“Yeah,” he grunted, sitting on the floor on his makeshift bed. “You can take the couch until the morning.”

You nodded, laying down on the couch and covering yourself with a blanket.

“I’m (Y/N), by the way.” He just grunted in response, your mind wandering to how you’d come to have Bucky Barnes as your neighbor

#bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes #neighbor au

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